News Clips - September 18, 2009

From September 10 to September 17, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 541 references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

National

Google Buys Start-Up for Book ScanningThe Wall Street Journal | September 17Google Inc. acquired a Web fraud prevention start-up that can help the Internet giant on another project: Its effort to scan newspapers and books for Internet distribution. Google, Mountain View, Calif., said it is buying reCaptcha, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff that presents puzzles to Web surfers as they register at sites or conduct online transactions.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125312746671516893.html

FBI: Murder, Violent Crime Dropped in 2008Associated Press/The New York Times | September 14The statistics are based on crimes reported to police, who then forward the information to the FBI. There were 14,180 murder victims in the United States last year. ''What has been impressive has been how flat all the violent crime rates have been since 2000. To a large degree that's still the case, but the striking change this year has been murder,'' said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminal justice at Carnegie Mellon University.http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/14/us/politics/AP-US-Crime.html?_r=1

Carnegie Mellon goes green with Gates-Hillman complexCNET News | September 10Please raise your hand if you've spent a lot of time in a basement environment while attempting to master one computer-related art or another. Well, that universal rite of passage for computer lovers seems to be over for Carnegie Mellon University students thanks to a $20 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a $10 million gift from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, and several other donors.http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10349214-54.html

Education for Leadership

My Summer at NASANASA | September 11Eric was assigned to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. A native of Webster, N.Y., Eric studies mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. In eighth grade, he won a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Florida and saw a Saturn V rocket for the first time; its size in real life impressed him. "I made the connection from pre-school aircraft and space picture books to seeing something with my own eyes," he said.http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/summer_at_nasa.html

Information Technology

What information is "personally identifiable"?EFF.org | September 11Not if you're LatanyaSweeney, a CarnegieMellon University computer science professor who showed in 1997 that this information was enough to pin down Mr. X's more familiar identity -- William Weld, the governor of Massachusetts throughout the 1990s.http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-personally-identifiable

Biotechnology

Researchers craft automated surgical gearEE Times | September 14Carnegie Mellon University has prototyped a video-based control system that automates a form of microscopic eye surgery to create a procedure which could be both faster and more accurate than current methods. Separately, researchers at Johns Hopkins University are trying to fuse optical and electromechanical sensors to enable more accurate surgical instruments.http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220000076

Environment

Coal FrontPittsburgh City Paper | September 17Inside the conference, some 400 engineers and other experts from 26 countries will hear talks with titles like "Making Clean Coal a Reality," by Carnegie Mellon professor M. Granger Morgan, and "The Urgency of Sustainable Coal," by Robert Beck, head of the National Coal Council, a trade group. They'll also tour the South Park research and development facility of Pittsburgh-based CONSOL Energy, which is among the country's largest coal producers.http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A68804

Regional Impact

Triple Play: Propel Schools, Sima Products and CMU collaborate on math learning devicePop City Media | September 16Propel Schools, a successful charter school program here in the Pittsburgh region, has received a grant from Spark (a new initiative of the Sprout Fund) to collaborate with consumer electronics company Sima Products and the innovation whizzes at CarnegieMellon University. They're seeking to create a prototype for a low-cost, handheld electronic device that parents and kids would use together to promote math literacy.http://www.popcitymedia.com/forgood/propelschools0916.aspx

Local

Carnegie Mellon professor's super adhesive inspired by the geckoPittsburgh Tribune-Review | September 12CarnegieMellon University Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Metin Sitti is an authority on what he calls the gecko's "one-sided Velcro" adhesive ability. "It's not like glue, it's not a liquid, it's a temporary attachment," said Sitti, who is head of the university's NanoRobotics Laboratory and is on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_642851.html

International

New PC? The spam pirates, ID bandits, are on the looseTelegram | September 13New Windows PCs typically come loaded with all kinds of third-party programs, many of which you will never use. “In a lot of cases, that’s extra software that might have vulnerabilities” that hackers could exploit, says Chad Dougherty, a vulnerability analyst at the CERT Program at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute. “You can get compromised through some software you didn’t even know you had."http://www.telegram.com/article/20090913/NEWS/909130605/1002/BUSINESS